


Te Amo and All That Jazz

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Love Confessions, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Phone Calls & Telephones, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, but like in that super duper awkward familial way that tony and peter always dance around, there is that single reference to the dusting tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25544308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: “I hate phone calls,” Tony says again, “but this is very...not unpleasant.”“You’re allowed to say I’m a pleasure to chat with, Mr. Stark.”“All I’m saying,” Tony talks over him, with affected snideness, “is that your squeaky chihuahua voice surprisingly doesnotsend me spiraling into a panic attack.”“Wow,” says Peter with zero enthusiasm. “I’m touched. That’s a--real convincing endorsement.”“And also,” Tony continues blithely as if he hadn’t spoken, “Pep says hi and she loves you. Thought I should--mention that. Before, you know. My brain. Blanks out. Zips off to maladaptive daydream land. ADHD farts. You know the works.”Peter’s answering tone is dryer than the turkey May burnt for Christmas. “You know, Tony, it’s okay to say ‘I love you’.”--Tony flies to Brazil on his first business trip since being back after the Snap. So what if he calls up Peter in the middle of the night because of his newfound separation anxiety?
Relationships: Pepper Potts/Tony Stark (mentioned), Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 91
Kudos: 429
Collections: ellie marvel fics - read, god tier spider-man fics, marvel fics that are marvelous





	Te Amo and All That Jazz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [josywbu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/josywbu/gifts).



> I'm posting this at 1 in the morning so it is definitely two days late now but happy belated birthday to my absolute pal, the babe, the fun one from day one! it's @[josywbu](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/josywbu)!! I know you have such a soft spot for fluff, esp the kind with just the tiniest dash of something emotional it, so I dug up (hopefully) the perfect drabble prompt for that and gave you...this. whatever this is. I actually really hope you like it.
> 
> Inspired by [this prompt](https://theoceanismyinkwell.tumblr.com/post/190336432688/the-way-you-said-i-love-you): "I love you," said from very far away.
> 
> To everybody else who's followed my content from the beginning, yes, I am a slut for oneshots of loving and tender and awkward phone calls at the wee hours in the morning between the iron fam. what about it

Before the whole giant homicidal raisin-headed alien situation befell Earth, Peter was sure the first time he would be more than ten miles away from Tony for an extended period of time would be when he moved into college. If he moved into college. And he was equally sure that of the two of them, he would be the one opening his fridge in the middle of the night because the rattle of the A/C unit was keeping him up, and he’d tiptoe past his strange roommate starfished on the next bed over, open up the tub of Stark Raving Hazelnuts and the tears would start streaming down his cheeks and he would pick up his phone and call Tony right then and there decidedly _not_ sniffling about it because Starks never let anyone live anything down.

But apparently floating in space for weeks and grieving in silence with a grumpy blue robot alien daughter has its own traumatic effects. And trauma makes knees go weak and molds children of men.

So all bets are off on Peter’s prediction when, five hours after he’s calculated that Tony landed in Rio de Janeiro, his phone lights up with Tony’s special ringtone--that very specific take by Lorde on “Baa Baa Black Sheep” from that one very specific talkshow (no, don’t even ask).

Peter taps out a quick _**brb**_ to Ned on Discord and picks up the call with an unceremonious, “I really hope you didn’t try to go asking for bread and end up calling someone your papa.”

Tony scoffs on the other end of the line. “I did no such thing.” A pause. Peter could have sworn his super-hearing picks up the _scritch scritch_ of the man rubbing his goatee. “Okay, maybe I did. Once. _Once_. And that was back at the airport.”

“This is why you should leave all the languages and communication to Pepper,” says Peter.

“I will do no such thing. Did you know she knows all the useless languages? Finnish, Armenian, Czech--”

“Hey, hey, hey, hey,” Peter says. “Don’t bash ’em. Maybe one of these days you’ll have a business conference in one of those countries.” The kid sniffs. “And stop deflecting from our topic. We were talking about how horrid you are at Portuguese and how much you wish I was there to help you out.”

“Não,” Tony says, with an exaggeratedly nasal drawl. “Não, não, _não_.”

“Pão,” Peter deadpans into the receiver.

“Did you--did you literally just call me a _dad_.”

“ _No_ , that’s ‘pai.’ I called you _bread_ , and that’s exactly why you just played yourself.”

“No, no. You definitely called me a dad.”

“Y’know, May dated a psychiatrist once and he was weird as hell but the one thing I remember from that dinner I third-wheeled at was when he said that people hear what they want to hear.”

“Do I need to be concerned about how and why exactly you were third-wheeling a grown-up date?”

Peter’s voice pitches up defensively. “He was weird, okay? He--he--always tied his shoelaces first before putting his feet in and he always picked the basil out of his fettucini. Every _single_ time.”

“Ah. So I take it you didn’t third-wheel just one date.”

“I’m Spider-Man,” Peter mumbles. “I--try to sense things if they’re gonna get weird. It’s my job.”

Tony’s tone is most definitely tinged with amusement now. “A little birdie tells me you got a tingle for that.”

Peter tips back in his office chair and groans in eternal longsuffering at the ceiling. “Why does everything you say sound suggestive. You’re a--you’re a dad. You’re supposed to be making a dad joke. Actually? I’m gonna hang up now.”

“That’s dad abuse,” says Tony. “Don’t you wanna know why I called, Webhead?”

“Not really,” says Peter beatifically. “If you need Portuguese lessons now, after I offered four times and you refused every single time--‘não, não’,” he quotes Tony in a pretty decent mimicry of the man’s drawl--“then the answer is--get this: _não_.”

“That is not what I sound like.”

“That is so what you sound like.”

“I hate to throw quotes back in your face,” Tony says in a tone that says anything but, “but in the words of your aunt’s very wise ex-boyfriend: ‘People hear what they want to hear’.”

“And I don’t wanna hear your annoying voice, so good-night-don’t-let-the-bed-bugs-bite-stay-safe-and-don’t-call-anyone-dad-again, byyyye.”

“Wait!”

Peter pauses mid-snicker. He never really was about to hang up on Tony, and he hopes the man knows that now, because Tony’s voice has shed its layer of jesting to reveal something raw and desperate underneath. It unnerves the boy.

It takes a while for Tony to speak again. When it does, it sounds to Peter as though he’s forcibly injected a measure of calm into his voice. Two or three years ago Peter might not have been able to tell the difference, but now is different. Now is--after. After space, after the planet where they all melted in the wind like rust, after being breathed back to life in a different time and place in more ways than one. After.

“I did call you for a good reason,” says Tony. “I had a whole opening gambit and everything. Except you took my moment and jumped right into the ‘pão’ thing.”

Peter presses the phone against his cheek where it’s shaped by a small grin. “Sorry for stealing your thunder. I’m, uh, I’m ready to hear your opening gambit now.”

“Well, now it’s just corny compared to the bread thing.”

“ _You’re_ corny compared to the bread thing.”

“Har, har. Very original. Remind me to buy a little notebook out here to take home with me so we can keep score of shots fired. I bet my side’s gonna be filling up fast.”

Peter squints at the tiny shadows on his popcorn ceiling. “Is that why you called me up? To brag about the souvenirs you’re gonna buy?”

“Yup,” Tony says, popping the _p_. “And I’m gonna get you the first Spider-Man merch I see. I don’t care if it’s a sippy cup or boxer briefs or a--or a goddamn body pillow.”

“Mr. _Stark_.”

“The very _first_ one I see,” Tony reiterates with emphasis, and oh, Lord, Peter can already hear the wolfish grin behind that tone. 

“Okay, well, I have five days of unfettered access to your labs, so good luck trying to stop me from making you a bionic arm that slaps you in the face every time you give me a new gag gift.”

“Good luck trying to get it on me.”

Peter’s voice turns saccharine. “Tony, I bench press school buses for breakfast.”

“I really hope there aren’t kiddos in them while you’re at it,” Tony mutters.

“I heard that.”

“That’s...kind of the point. Super-hearing? Jingle tingle? Good ole radioactive mutations because geez, teenagers can’t have normal puberties these days?”

“Scratch the bionic arm, I’m getting Bucky to smother you in a bear hug the instant you get home,” Peter deadpans.

“Whatever you’re paying him, pal, I can triple that to make him let me go.”

“Oh, but Mr. Stark, I’m not paying him in money, I’m cashing in on the fact that everyone who lays eyes on me can’t resist these puppy dog eyes and all the times I held the door for them and called them _sir_ and _ma’am_.” He lowers his voice conspiratorially. “It’s called building relationships, Tony.”

“Your mother should have named you Dennis.”

“What? Why.”

“Because you’re a menace,” Tony says coolly.

Peter stops and stares at the ceiling for a full minute. Then, wedging the phone between his shoulder and his cheek, he raises his hands and slow-claps into the receiver.

“Go ahead and buy that notebook,” the kid says. “Buy--like--twenty notebooks. You’re on.”

Tony dissolves into hysterical laughter on the other end, probably--definitely--more unhinged than the situation calls for, but Peter just rolls his eyes at the air and suppresses a fond smile over the image of his mentor that springs to mind now: floating in some bougie hotel pool right now as the sunset turns into the indigo of the gloam, shades on even in the dimness, phone on speaker and lying across his stomach as it projects Peter’s contact photo. Which is definitely not a holographic rendering of the time Peter got a glob of cheddar broccoli stuck in his windpipe because he was gobbling up the mac and cheese too fast and didn’t realize Pepper had slipped actual greens into it.

Tony’s laughter slowly fades into the night, and Peter can just make out the soft calls of bellhops and the chatter of elderly guests in the background.

“I hate phone calls,” he says out of the blue.

Peter raises a brow at that. He senses the _but_ chasing on the heels of the statement, so he bites his lip and waits.

“I hate phone calls,” Tony says again, “but this is very...not unpleasant.”

“You’re allowed to say I’m a pleasure to chat with, Mr. Stark.”

“All I’m saying,” Tony talks over him, with affected snideness, “is that your squeaky chihuahua voice surprisingly does _not_ send me spiraling into a panic attack.”

“Wow,” says Peter with zero enthusiasm. “I’m touched. That’s a--real convincing endorsement.”

“And also,” Tony continues blithely as if he hadn’t spoken, “Pep says hi and she loves you. Thought I should--mention that. Before, you know. My brain. Blanks out. Zips off to maladaptive daydream land. ADHD farts. You know the works.”

Peter’s answering tone is dryer than the turkey May burnt for Christmas. “You know, Tony, it’s okay to say ‘I love you’.”

Tony sniffs. “Not really sure why you feel the need to tell me this, but duly noted.”

“I love you. There. It’s your turn now.”

The man is silent for a long moment. Water laps at the edges of the quiet, confirming Peter’s earlier suspicions that Tony is lounging outside by the pool.

“It’s,” says Tony. Starts, stops again. “It’s not that I don’t want to say it back, bud.”

Peter sobers instantly.

“It just...sounds a lot like goodbye these days. And it’s, uh, kinda yanking me by the hamstrings right now to think of saying it when we’re practically five thousand miles apart.”

Peter swallows and gives a sharp nod at his wall. A beat later, having realized Tony doesn’t have his super-hearing, he goes: “Uh-huh.”

“I. Er. Actually called you to tell you that.”

“Tell me what?”

Tony clears his throat. In the space of wordlessness that passes, Peter picks up that Tony meant to tell him _I love you_.

“I was working up to it,” says Tony. “But, um--Pep said something right before she--disappeared to take a call from some mogul from Hong Kong, or pay the doorman a thousand bucks not to let anyone take photos of me, it’s really only one or the other these days. Anyway. She said, right before she left, that--well. Things you say in a different language can feel less difficult to say.”

Peter blinks, long and slow. His genius brain already knows where this is going. Suddenly his eyes feel damp. Goddammit.

“Yeah?” says Peter.

“So.” The shrug is practically audible. “Y’know. Te amo and all that jazz.”

It’s Peter’s turn to cackle now, breathless without meaning to be. “Fun stuff,” he says, dashing moisture from his lids with the back of his hand. 

“Pete.”

“Cool beans.”

“ _Peter_.”

“Ten out of ten.”

“I haven’t even bought the notebook yet and you’re losing by a mile, buddy.”

Peter snickers. “Good thing we got five thousand between us to catch up on.”

**Author's Note:**

> Who's surprised that my 'drabble' turned into almost 2k? absolutely no one.
> 
> Also I was definitely supposed to send my dissertation committee the first draft of my proposal tonight but it's ok because they all love meeeee and it's quarantine and time is just a construct and also I have adhd and writing fic is _way_ more motivating ok??
> 
> Hit me up with your thoughts!! Your brain alphabets. Your réactions. I love to see inside your heads!! <3 -kaleb
> 
> muh tumblr: [theoceanismyinkwell](http://theoceanismyinkwell.tumblr.com)  
> muh insta: [kc.barrie](http://www.instagram.com/kc.barrie)  
> muh youtube bc i sing and make funny ish there: [kaleb the intrepid](https://tinyurl.com/kalebtheintrepid)


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